= A Serial Introduction Part 3 =Winners of ITU-AJ Encouragement Awards 2022
In May every year, The ITU Association of Japan (ITU-AJ) proudly presents ITU-AJ Encouragement Awards to people who have madeoutstanding contributions in the field of international standardization and have helped in the ongoing development of ICT.
These Awards are also an embodiment of our sincere desire to encourage further contributions from these individuals in the future.
If you happen to run into these winners at another meeting in the future, please say hello to them.
But first, as part of the introductory series of Award Winners, allow us to introduce some of those remarkable winners.

Takashi Harada

Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
https://www.oki.com/Fields of activity: ITU-T SG20, Infrastructure monitoring

Activities for standardization of infrastructure monitoring
I am very honored to receive this prestigious ITU-AJ
Encouragement Award. I am most grateful to ITU-AJ and all who
have given me guidance and encouragement.
Activities on ITU-T SG20 in this field started in 2019. At
the beginning of the proposal, there was no discussion about
infrastructure monitoring in international standardization.
First, we introduced a practical demonstration of infrastructure
monitoring in Japan as use cases for smart cities. This was very
well received by the participants as it was a new perspective, andit was accepted as a use case for smart cities. The following year,
we began working on a recommendation for a reference modeland requirements for a civil engineering infrastructure healthmonitoring system. After about two years of discussion, therecommendation Y.4214 was established in February 2022.
During studies for the recommendation, there were commentsKazuhiro Hoya

that careful discussion was necessary, since maintenance andmanagement of civil engineering infrastructure is related toregulations in each country. I feel that this result was only possible
thanks to the great cooperation and support of Mr. Toru Yamada(NEC; SG20 Vice-chairman), the Japan delegation from MIC
and Japanese companies, and Mr. Marco Carugi (Huawei, China;
SG20 Q2 rapporteur).
For Japan, which has a large amount of civil engineering
infrastructure and a shrinking workforce, it will be increasingly
important and urgent how digital technology is applied to theinspection and the maintenance of civil engineering infrastructurein the future, to promote efficiency and labor saving. I will do
my best to promote standardization activities in this field anddisseminate the results of our activities.

Fuji Television Network, Inc.
https://www.fujitv.com/
Fields of activity: ITU-R WP6B, WP6C, W3C, CTA WAVE project

Standardizing for programme production and exchange
I am pleased to receive this encouragement award from theITU-AJ and am very thankful to the association and everyone
who has provided guidance and support. I will continue workingon development in the telecommunications and content industries.
Japan is a world leader in implementation of ultra-highdef inition television broadcasting and has wide-ranging
knowledge involving peripheral areas such as programme
production and exchange. In this case, we have brought
information regarding identification of required bit rates for
programme production using the HEVC codec into amendmentof certain ITU-R recommendations, namely BT.1203 and16New Breeze Spring 2023

BT.2073, which are documents related to specifying bitrates forcertain purposes in production. The information was obtained
through the drafting of the ARIB standard, “Common media
file format for UHDTV program exchange”, which brought
about a new approach using subjective evaluation to specify theseparameters for high-quality, high-bit-rate video materials andpackages. I hope that this work will contribute to penetration ofultra-high-definition video in domains beyond broadcasting. For
this contribution, I received much support from everyone working
on standardization at ARIB, for which I am also very thankful.

Takanori Maegawa

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East Corporation
https://www.ntt-east.co.jp/en/
Fields of activity: ICT promotion in Vietnam and emerging nations.

Contributions to improving education environments and developing theICT market in Vietnam
1. C ontributions to improving education environments inVietnam
The government in Vietnam is promoting reform of education
using ICT, with requirements such as “Digitizing school lessons,”“Support for home study from schools using telecommunications,”
and “Using telecommunications to eliminate regional education
disparity between urban and regional areas.” For this, we provided
an ICT education support system platform and content, which
contributed to improving education environments in Vietnam.
2. Establishing a base for software development in Vietnam
Contributions promoting bridge-building and businessdevelopment between Vietnam and Japan, improving skills of IT
technologists and developing the ICT market in Vietnam.

Shinji Yoshida

Specif ically, I used the deep understanding of local
commercial culture gained while residing in Vietnam. I trained
local IT technologists regarding commercial culture, work flows,
quality control methods, etc. used in Japan. Through development
trial projects using low-code, I established standard development
schemes (organization, documentation forms, communication
methods, etc.).
I hope to continue to contribute to developing the ICT market
in Vietnam in the future.
[Message to readers]
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you are interested insoftware development or ITO business.

Ex. KDDI Foundation
https://www.kddi-foundation.or.jp/english/
Fields of activity: APT Capacity Building Programme

APT technical training forced to change by the COVID-19 pandemicFirst, I would like to say how thankful I am on receiving an
ITU-AJ Encouragement Award. I would also like to extend myheartfelt appreciation to everyone at ITU-AJ and to all concerned
for their valuable guidance and cooperation in my past activities.
From 2017 to 2022, from among the various international
cooperation projects that serve as a pillar of KDDI Foundation
activities, I was mainly engaged in ICT technical training
commissioned by the Asia Pacific Telecommunity (APT) andheld in Japan. During this time, the training mode underwent agreat change from group training to online training due to theCOVID-19 pandemic.
In group training conducted up to FY2019, trainees would
come to Japan, and after spending about two weeks attendingclassroom lectures and making inspection tours of related
institutions, they would take back the results of their training totheir respective organizations.
However, from FY2020 on, trainees could not come to Japan,
and as a result, training switched to an online format in which
trainees were asked to view video recordings of lectures on ane-learning system. Additionally, in training conducted in FY2021,
some lectures were conducted live.
This year, with the easing of entry restrictions, the KDDI
Foundation has been commissioned by APT to conduct hybrid
training that combines group training consisting of hands-on
seminars and inspection tours in Japan with at-home online
training. This presents a new challenge to the KDDI Foundation,
but preparations are proceeding based on its past experience inimplementing programs. It is our hope that this form of trainingthat combines the good features of both group training and online
training will be highly evaluated by trainees and APT.

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